OMG! Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Is Being Made into a Broadway Musical

Willy Wonka has been making quite a few headlines as of late. Most recently, we found out his famous chocolate factory is coming to life in the form of Toothsome Chocolate Factory at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. And he’s back again. Get excited, Broadway fans, Roald Dahl book fans and general sweets aficionados! You’ll be excited to learn that there’s now going to be a musical adaptation of Charlie and the gang for the stage beginning in 2017.

The musical, locked in by Warner Bros. Theater Ventures, will be called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as Dahl’s original was (the 1971 film version was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). There’s no word whether it will follow the classic 1971 movie more closely or Tim Burton’s 2005 version. Perhaps it’ll eschew the films entirely and go its own way. It already has a British version, which began in London’s West End in 2013 and will close in 2017, and will makes its stateside debut shortly afterwards. The American musical will be led by theater vet Jack O’Brien, with songwriters from Hairspray and choreographers from Smash and On the Town, reports Variety.

It remains to be seen how the two shows will be different from each other, if at all, but that’s part of the fun of theater and a director’s interpretation. In case you can’t wait until then, Dahl’s other successful book-turned-Broadway smash, Tony-winner Matilda, is still running in New York and making the rounds in a national version as well.

Either way, we can almost guarantee that there are going to be singing oompa loompas.

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